Valentine’s Day Strike

This year, I am once again not celebrating Valentine’s Day. Silly holidays such as this interfere with one’s career. So, I’m crushing rocks all day and then going to the orthodontist and then returning to lab to crush MORE rocks. Yep. Take that, Valentine’s Day. Rather than indulging in the usual mush, I’m spending two hours at the dentist and then working all night. Why? Because I believe that my denstist visit and my rock crushing are a much better use of my time. I mean, I’d much rather have three dental students poke around my teeth and then go cover myself in rock dust than receive presents and then go to dinner and a movie.

Anyone else on strike* from Valentine’s Day?

If not, I hope that you are celebrating with someone wonderful. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

*Please not that being on strike is very different– idealistically, emotionally, and psychologically– from not having a date on Valentine’s Day. I’m choosing not to have a date. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Evelyn is a geologist, writer, traveler, and skeptic residing in Cape Town, South Africa with frequent trips back to the US for work. She has two adorable cats; enjoys hiking, rock climbing, and kayaking; and has a very large rock collection. You can follow her on twitter @GeoEvelyn. She also writes a geology blog called Georneys.

31 Comments

You know, I was at best vaguely aware that there was some sort of holiday today before all my favorite bloggers mentioned Valentine's Day. I suppose being totally oblivious doesn't count as being on strike, but perhaps it's close enough? (:

Like writerdd, my girlfriend and I don't celebrate Vday. We think it's stupid and just an excuse contrived by the chocolate/diamond/greeting card conglomerate to guilt men into spending money. We don't celebrate Christmas at all either. Our friends are pretty appalled with us.

Try not to feel too bad, Evelyn, we all love you! Though I know that that doesn't "make your lava flow" … :(

I'm staying at the office late to talk with a couple friends about statistical physics. Then I'm going home to bake blueberry bread. With any luck, I'll sneak in a Ghost in the Shell episode or a Feynman lecture video before crashing on the couch.

If it weren't for the Blagnet, I would have forgotten about the whole occasion. See, Evelyn, you're only making the problem worse by reminding your ignorant readers about the sweet, sweet Hallmark lovin' they could be having!

There's a key difference between not celebrating Valentine's Day and celebrating the holiday we might call anti-Valentine's Day (deliberately acting in a way to emphasize our loneliness). It's the same as the difference between atheism and anti-Christianity. Thanks to High Priest Dawkins, we all know that atheism is a religion the way that not collecting stamps is a hobby, or that atheists have religion the way healthy people have disease. I try to make my non-observance of Valentine's Day follow the same logic.

Rav Winston has just won the thread, in my opinion, with his Monty Python reference. Love that sketch.

I celebrated the day by sleeping in, then heading to a mall with a WiFi connection so I could play World of Warcraft for the remainder of the afternoon. That's it.

I've never had a reason to 'celebrate' V-day, even if I wanted to. Never been dating anyone when V-day rolled around, never purchased a 'crush' a present or anything like that. I'm not ENTIRELY anti-Valentine's day, and sometimes I think I'd like to be in a position where I could reasonably celebrate. But such is life, I suppose.

As it is, I'm just waiting until tomorrow (as I know Blake will be doing as well) for the 50% off candy. Woo-hoo for commerce! :-P

Odd as it may sound, I was actually planning to forget about Valentine's Day, and it actually worked. My reasoning for doing this: If I tried to get a date, I'd fail and get upset. If I celebrated Singles Awareness Day, I'd skip straight to being upset. This way skips even that. Basically, my plan was just to completely lose track of the date. I finished up all forms and stuff the required dating a while ago, so I had no clue what day it was.

Mission: Successful. I didn't realize it was Valentine's day until lunch, when the cashier handed me an evaluation form which mentioned it was Valentine's day. And even then, my first instinct was that it was a mistake; it was still too early, right? Even though I figured it out then, I managed to forget again, and even later mistook the month for January.

A) I'm not currently involved with anyone (which is not a complaint – I don't feel "alone on Valentines Day", I just happen to not currently be involved with anyone.

B) I am in Fresno doing field work, and therefore would be some distance from anyone I did happen to be seeing, and therefore would not be celebrating.

However, I would like to say that Valentines Day made it damn difficult for me to find a hotel room in this city. If you can figure out why people are flocking ot hotels in Fresno on Valentines Day, let me know, because I am baffled.

I'm on strike too, but while I'm on strike, I'm sort of picketing and heckling those who are not on strike. I'll take a nice surprise token of someone's affection any other day of the year over something that symbolizes a warped sense of obligation on Feb 14th.

My cousin actually gave his girlfriend a basket of stuff like chocolates and soap and whatnot, but last weekend. This way it was still a suprise, as his girlfriend wasn't expecting it until yesterday, and also, Wednesday being a weekday, he was able to enjoy the gift with his girlfriend during the weekend, when he didn't have to work the next day.

I guess in a way, that IS romantic. Although clearly it is more a matter of convenience in a sense.

I too despise Valentines Day. How can anything so commercially packaged be romantic? I was out on the night of the 14th, but in a non-dating capacity. I saw lots of flowers and balloons being toted around. Later, I found myself in a deserted metrorail station. There was a single balloon bouncing around the high ceiling, and it struck me that the lonely ballon was the perfect metaphor for Valentines Day. A bunch of hoolah totally forgotten mere moments later.

But make no mistake, I'm a big hypocrite who would jump through all the silly hoops if I were actually dating someone.

My favourite term is "VD Day", by analogy with ATM Machine, etc. (Which linguistic fallacy has a name that I can't remember now.) Although, this year, I simply used "VD" instead for my AIM away message. (As in, "Happy VD!")

It's not that I hate Valentine's Day. I'm basically indifferent to the enterprise, even the times when I'm dating somebody around that time. I just think it's funny. VD! Hee!